Ladies & Gents, we have a CRIMP!

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I attended a meeting up at Glasgow University a while ago, it was hosted by Willie Yeomans and was introducing CRIMP.

CRIMP is a citizen science project which aims to provide training in riverfly monitoring to volunteers across the eight counties of the River Clyde catchment. Riverfly monitoring can help protect the quality of our rivers; increase our knowledge and understanding of invertebrate populations and promote the conservation of their habitats. Volunteer involvement is important to the development of this project and will allow us to assess the sustainability and practical benefits of using the method on a large scale. CRIMP will provide another tool to inform management of the fishery and freshwater ecosystem. For example, we have had two recent examples of river pollution (one in Lanarkshire and one in Renfrewshire) where well-trained volunteers could have sampled the incidents more quickly than even the statutory bodies – we see this as a way of helping to protect your river; your fishery. CRIMP will involve the Clyde River Foundation (CRF) coordinating monthly river health checks undertaken by specially trained volunteers. We will deliver training workshops in riverfly monitoring three times per year, followed by a half day site selection and sampling “run through” day with each angling club. From there, volunteers will monitor their given sites monthly and report their results to the CRF. The CRF will collate and check results, and report back every three months to contributing angling club secretaries, with a facility for more rapid communication with the Scottish Environment Protection Agency

SEPA) if pollution is detected.

So today (Sunday) was the day that the mighty Kelvin attained its dedicated team of river fly enthusiasts. We all met at the Friends of the River Kelvin building down at the Botanics and had some classroom work to complete before we were let loose on the river with our nets.

Yeomans did not trust us so he gave us a pep talk before we got in the water…

We had a representative from SEPA to show us all how it was properly done. What you do is lean on your net and kick for three minutes in front of it. You must use running water and work your way across a pool. After the three mins a further min in spent scraping rocks by hand.

This is how the experts do it…

Kick Sampling

We were finally allowed to take our nets to the water under the watchful gaze of the CRF.

Jim Burns gets stuck in….

I partnered with Jim Burns simply because we have been fishing a lot together recently and we may as well do this at the start of each session. Yeoman’s commented we had collected so many gravel and rocks we could have built a wall.

Some people collected a half decent amount.

We found an interesting amount of insects. Rooting through the tray was great fun, trying to work out what the hell some of the bugs were was a bit of a challenge considering we usually only see them in their adult and flying about state, apart from Stoneflies which will stomp all over you.

Atkins picked up a stone and their was a good amount of cased caddis..

Cased Caddis

It was great fun until the end when we had a bloody exam – we each had to attend a tray and identify some bugs under the watchful eyes of Caroline from the River Clyde Foundation. Thankfully I passed and will be taking my certificate into my work to put up on the wall.

One of the things I was surprised about was the fact we had some Blue Winged Olive (Ephemerillidae) nymphs in our tray, it means that we should actually have some good evening action down on the Kelvin at dusk during the summer. Not that we do not usually, more I know what to look out for. They are super abundant down the Clyde just not on the Kelvin.

Alistair didn’t need your head in the shot. I realized who it was just by looking at the famous mustache.

I wish we had something like this on some of our streams. Maybe I’ll have to get Alistair and Jim over to lecture on this and other various subjects to or fly fishing club. Well, maybe Alistair, I forgot that James ‘Bond’ Burns is on our country’s watch list for some dubious behavior.